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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26821951">heart-strings that play soft and low</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onlymystory/pseuds/Onlymystory'>Onlymystory</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Rainy Days, soft sundays</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:20:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,428</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26821951</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onlymystory/pseuds/Onlymystory</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days are just for the two of them and the love they share. </p><p>A soft Sundays fic for Joe/Nicky.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>223</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>heart-strings that play soft and low</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I've been telling myself for weeks I was going to write a little something for Soft Sundays and I finally did it. The verb tenses change up a bit (deliberately) but they are broken up by section so it shouldn't throw you off.</p><p>Title from "Moondance" by Van Morrison because ugh, the most gorgeously romantic song ever, imo.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Good morning, hayati,” whispers Nicky in soft tones. He sits at the edge of the bed, kisses Joe’s cheek as his husband blinks blearily into the morning light. </p><p>“Morning babe,” returns Joe. </p><p>He is a slow riser at any time, but the morning after a peaceful night’s sleep always starts exceptionally slowly. Nicky waits as Joe stretches and rolls in the blankets, nuzzles into Nicky’s back, and begins his process of rejoining the day.</p><p>When he sniffs the air experimentally, then with greater appreciation mixed with curiosity, Nicky knows Joe is awake enough to hold an actual conversation.</p><p>“Do I smell coffee and jasmine?” Joe’s chin rests against Nicky’s shoulder.</p><p>Nicky twists enough to claim a morning kiss. “It’s raining this morning, my love. The sky is full of clouds and shades of gray, the drops spray against the stone of the roof, the air is filled with the rich scent of petrichor. God has seen fit to bless us this day indeed.”</p><p>“And they say I’m the poet,” says Joe, stealing another kiss. “Yet here you are with such lovely descriptions.”</p><p>“If I have words of poetry, it is because I have spent my life seated at the feet of a master, and learned all that I can.”</p><p>“You flatter me.” Joe’s arms wrap around Nicky’s waist and he snuggles in again. </p><p>“And so I shall, for as long as I have breath.”</p><p>They are quiet for a moment, content to be. Then Joe perks up. “Wait? Nicolò, the coffee?”</p><p>“Sì my love,” laughs Nicky, delighting in Joe’s excitement. “I thought perhaps we let today be one to honor tradition.”</p><p>Joe beams, his smile setting ablaze even the darkest embers of Nicky’s soul. “That sounds amazing.”</p>
<hr/><p>They don’t get soft days, not as often as one would expect in nearly a thousand years of existence, but over the centuries they have become something of a tradition. The morning starts with coffee in the Tunisian style, made with a touch of orange-blossom and, if possible, jasmine to decorate the table. It is a practice that came long after them, but one Joe fell in love in the mid-nineteenth century.</p><p>They had returned to Tunisia after at least two centuries away, choosing it as a place to get to know Sebastien, who had recently come to them after losing the last of his family. Joe had suggested it as a place that would be distinctly different from France and all that Booker had lost, yet the language barrier would not be as strong. It was an attempt to move forward comfortably.</p><p>An idea that unfortunately failed in Sebastien’s case, the man was nowhere near being able to move forward.</p><p>But they had gained something for them during that stay. The cafe culture spoke to both Joe and Nicky, and Joe in particular found himself a fan of coffee for many years. Their mornings spoke of relaxation, of a gentle pace, of communion with each other.</p><p>So they kept the habit, incorporating it into the laziest of days, a way to set the tone. </p>
<hr/><p>Traditions are a funny thing.</p><p>Andy and Quynh have lived so long and so long ago, that the idea of doing something for tradition’s sake is somewhat foreign. “Why do you wait for the rain to give you permission for laziness?” Andy would ask them often. “Do what you want to do, when you want to do it.”</p><p>Nile and Booker are new enough that traditions mean memories of mortal days and families left behind. Traditions mean pain and sorrow and so they stumble their way through which to keep and which to discard.</p><p>But for Joe and for Nicky, tradition to them is in the form of ritual, of set practices and behaviors, of actions that honor time and history and faith. </p><p>So days such as this have become a tradition for them. The day must be filled with rain to start. Not loud storms, which are for games and family dinner and laughter that rings through every corner of the house. It is not for days of scattered showers; these belong to outdoor explorations, ducking away from a sudden burst to hide under an awning, to kiss and ignore the backs of their shirts getting soaked, then to step back into the sun and continue the adventure. It must be rain that is steady, a rain that drizzles through the day and into the night, that never lets up so you are not tempted to leave and not afraid to stay.</p>
<hr/><p>They begin such days with a tradition of coffee, of lingering looks over a sweet pastry or two, the habit less about the taste of the sweet than the taste of it on each other’s skin. </p><p>Nicky will sprawl across Joe’s lap on the couch, tuck only his feet under a blanket, and beg for Joe to read him a bit of poetry, “no, not the words of other poets, I only want you today,” he will say, until the words blend together and his love is an all-consuming thing that makes him take the little book from Joe’s hands and pull him down so that Joe’s lips are now moving against his.</p><p>They will make a platter of little bites for lunch, cubes of cheese and fresh tomatoes, crisp cucumbers and bread rubbed with roasted garlic. </p><p>Nicky will fall asleep in the afternoon as he always does, feet pressed between Joe’s back and the couch cushions, his arms flung out in ways that make Joe’s back ache just looking at them, his cheek smushed into the pillow.</p><p>Joe will sketch him again and again and again. He will sketch other things at times, but there is always Nicky in the picture somehow, filling it with life. </p><p>When Nicky awakes, he will apologize for falling asleep for wasting moments of their day, “it’s a gift, tesoro, and here I am squandering it.”</p><p>“You are my gift,” Joe will reply, “and besides, you are much easier to draw when you are sleeping and still.”</p><p>Nicky will attack with kisses and teasing until Joe begs for mercy. “I take it back, I take it back!”</p><p>Joe will fall asleep in turn, curled into Nicky’s side as Nicky sings simple songs of their past, words that sometimes have no meaning and yet somehow mean everything. He will wake to have slipped to Nicky’s lap at some point, his shoulders usually covered with the progress of Nicky’s latest knitting project. </p><p>The late afternoons are for prayer, for a chance to honor faith and faithful rest, to remind each other of the blessing that is their love.</p><p>Dinner is about laughter and experiments. The rule is to choose 4 items each, completely ignorant of the other’s choices, then make a meal together with everything. </p><p>“Must you always pick some sort of tomato?” Nicky will tease, because Joe always, always insists that tomatoes be a part of dinner, he loves them so.</p><p>“An Italian who doesn’t like tomatoes, what is the world coming to?” Joe will say, waiting for the inevitable outcry of “I was dead four centuries over before tomatoes even came to Italy! And I am Genoese! Let the others rest on the ease of nightshades in cooking, we are more original and...Yusuf?! You are teasing me again?”</p><p>Joe will laugh from deep in his belly, an indignant Nicky is one the most attractive versions of his husband and say “only a little, hayati, only a little.”</p><p>“Then I shall tease only a little as well,” Nicky will answer with a devilish smirk, but he will in fact tease quite a lot, until Joe is no longer laughing, but panting and desperate and begging against Nicky’s lips and tongue and touch.</p><p>Dinner is usually made twice on these days, but the delay is never unwelcome.</p>
<hr/><p>“It was a good day,” Joe says, tracing nonsensical patterns along Nicky’s chest and stomach in bed at the end of the night. “Thank you, my love.”</p><p>Nicky’s breath is still unsteady. He is the one to get them out of bed on these days, but Joe is the one who puts them back in it, in ways Nicky is eternally grateful for. </p><p>“Only because you are in them,” he replies. “Good days happen because good people exist in them and you, my darling, my husband, my Yusuf, are the best of people.”</p><p>“Because of you, my Nicolò, because of you.”</p><p>They fall asleep in each other’s arms, to the sound of their own soft breathing, and nothing but the rain.</p>
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